First Day of School

So heres a picture of me all pumped to go to school, sort of. It started off with me taking the city bus to school. This is a normal thing between all the students. It was about a half hour ride on the city bus. It kind of sucked. But I’ll get used it. Once I got to school I had no idea what was going on but luckily enough my first teacher found me at the office and I followed my classmates around all day. There is 9 or 10 periods in the day, its an 8 hour day. One of the periods is a 10 minute recess and the other is a 50 minute lunch. The school is campus style so some classes I need to switch buildings. The first half of the day was okay, we literally did nothing. Then came along Geo, History, and Math. The Math that is being taught is out of this world and I couldn’t even do the review. I am going to fail math thats for sure! But as long as the teacher sees me trying I will not get sent back home! My schedule that I have changes every day and I don’t know how to read it! The program I am in is for what I thought mechanics, hands on work, easy to learn. But… The school I am going to specializes in Mechanic Techniques so all my classes are hard! The math class I am in has 5 people. The teacher told me only 4 people passed last year. Theres 5 this year because of me I guess! I barely passed Grade 10 math last year in english! More advanced and in french, not going to happen 😛 I’ll try though thats for sure. I made a few friends as well. Theres those 4 other people i get to follow around all day because they have the same schedule as I do. The schooling system is wayyyyy more complicated here and I don’t see why. I’m not bragging too much about Canada but we’re doing it right with the semester system. 4 classes a day for half the year and another 4 classes a day the other half the year. Its easy and makes sense! Oh and don’t even get me started on the cafeteria business. I walked in to buy a sandwich and they thought I was stealing it. I tried using the I’m an exchange student excuse and it didn’t work! Turns out I had to go get myself a red plastic key with a chip in it, then go to a machine and load the key with money, then go to the cafe and scan my key that has my money to get a sandwich. So complicated lol. So for the first day one of my new friends bought the sandwich for me. I was going to pay him back, I kept trying to ask him how much it was and he kept telling me next time you can use your new key. So I’m not sure if he meant that like pay him back or just he didn’t know what i was trying to say so he told me how to buy it. Oh well I will figure out soon!

School started on a Friday. Who does that? Well I’m glad I already have the weekend to relax because I am freaking out to go back to school. Never been scared of school before! When its in a different language, with people you don’t know, 8 hours a day of different class schedule everyday, and it’s hard! Crazy stuff. I’m going to try to aim for 50’s! Or higher of course 😉 I may have to change courses because although I love the mechanics course. I thought I’d be working on cars and quads like fun stuff. Not rebuilding space ships and flying to the moon. Well they’re not actually but thats how it feels!

Oh and a plus to make my day better, I went with no supplies. I told my host mom that I needed them and she knew so we went today (Saturday) to pick some up, not any of the days before school. I was surviving the exchange life perfectly fine until this thing called school showed up. None of the teachers even knew I was an exchange student until they asked me how to say my last name. I said “Toeppner” and they responded “ohhhhh anglais” So I hope they don’t think my last name is english or maybe they just picked out my accent right away! Also my first teacher was helping me in english and told me to correct him if he spoke the wrong english. I was like no just speak french! Same with my friends they kept struggling to speak english and asking how to say certain words to each other and I keep telling them no speak french! But I do appreciate the effort they’re giving to try speaking english to me.

I didn’t post last night because literally I got home and passed out. I had to be woken up for dinner which was at 9:30. That sucked and then my family insisted I should have some wine with them because they had guests over. I said no thanks and they said ya ya and I had a glass. I slept good after that anyways!

Oh and also I have this class called Morale. It is the class you get if you don’t pick a religion class. I didn’t pick anything to begin with. All I said I wanted was to be in the shop and now I get all these crazy hard classes with super smart students. So if you pick not to have a religion class, you still get a religion class but with no religion.

One thing I found weird is the lack of information the teachers have. Literally the first day the teachers ask everyone to write their names, grade and level because the teachers don’t know. off this piece of paper I could have put my name as Fred and the teacher would not know any difference. Very weird system. And this happened at the beginning of every class. Oh and to mention that all everybody does here is handwrite! and I can barely read some peoples handwriting!

So all in all my first day was every interesting. I am not excited for the extremely hard classes. But all the people were fun to talk to that’s for sure.

Right now as I post this It is 2:40pm (14:40) Talk soon! Got more interesting stories to come 😛

WOW sounds like you are in for some schooling but you are tackling it with a good attitude. You can only do your best and try 🙂
It sounds like first year of university!! I love hearing about everything you are doing and can’t wait for more! Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Do your best & never mind the rest–that’s what I was saying to Mike—-but make sure you are doing your best—-I think you will learn a lot-lot- of new experiences- take avantage – you want regret it—love Claire